Amen Corner sax player Allan Jones. “Jimi was
very often out of tune, because he used to bash his
guitar around like crazy. And he may have been
a little bit out of it and didn’t quite tune up his
guitar properly before he went on, or whatever.
And he was constantly going out of tune.
“This night, he actually took the guitar off his
shoulder and threw it at the Marshall stack. The
place just erupted and went fucking ballistic!”
Schoolboy shit. “I remember The Move playing
once, and I rode a bicycle across the stage,” Noel
Redding liked to recall. “Another time we put stink
bombs in Bev Bevan’s bass-drum pedal.”
Oh, how they laughed.
Jimi seeing the other side of acid in Syd Barrett
of Pink Floyd: his brains already blown out. Syd
standing there motionless, the band filling, long
crazy head-trip instrumentals, like it’s all part of
the plan. A sold-out Royal Albert Hall as the
Experience powered through Foxey Lady, Fire,
Burning Of The Midnight Lamp, Spanish Castle Magic,
The Wind Cries Mary and Purple Haze. Jimi, Noel and
Mitch just showing off now. Power-trio trip, world
bow down, yeah.
Keith Emerson before he died: “Everybody
involved in the tour, they’d all come back in the
wings and watch him because every night he
played he’d do something completely different.
A lot of times he astounded
Noel Redding and Mitch
Mitchell, because they didn’t
always know what he was
going to do. He was certainly
trashing a lot of speakers.
I remember him playing the
Flying V guitar for the first
time, and he threw it and it
actually landed like an arrow
into the speaker cabinet, and
us backstage watching from
the wings were just
completely, wow!”
The night in Bristol:
dozens of fans crash the
dressing room. Eager
autograph hunters. One of
them to Jimi loudly so that
everyone hears: “I think
Eric Clapton is much better
than you.”
The room freezes. Jimi turning round: “Well,
I think Eric’s a far better guitar player too.”
Another lost night, Jimi swinging his guitar
around his head, the seven furies, brings it down
and it smashes into Mitch’s bass drum. Mitch in
tears afterwards. Jimi still tripping-tripping
tripping. “You shouldn’t have done that! You’ve got
no respect for my drums!”
It was true. Jimi gliding, spiralling. Jimi wasted.
Two nights before the end of the tour in
December, at the Nottingham Theatre Royal, the
elastic band snapped. Jimi just gone, barely even
trying, the guitar hopelessly out of tune yet Jimi
barely noticing or caring.
Jimi giggled, but it was like some private joke
only he was in on, him and the ho-ho-ing voices in
his head. The faces that surrounded him in his
everlasting dream, the rainbows and the caves and
the wild-money river and pet-hate loves and lies
and beautiful people, only none of them mine,
really mine, ya dig?
Jimi giggled and did all his party tricks – pullingat the guitar strings with his
teeth, playing the guitar
behind his back – but he couldn’t get the music to
really move, to focus and breathe and conjure fire.
He wasn’t really trying.
Almost a year ago to the day he and Kathy had
moved into the pad in Montagu Square. Then Hey
Joe had come out, been a hit – a hit! And Jimi had
been on the move ever since. Not like the old days
of being second or third banana, one step ahead of
the rent, the law, the baby mamas, all that shit – but
this time as the big kahuna. Hey Joe, Purple Haze, The
Wind Cries Mary, Are You Experienced – all hits, my
brother! Big-ass hits! Then Monterey... big in
America, baby, land of getting it on... the
Fillmore, five at the West, the Scene in
New York, getting thrown off the
Monkees tour for being too baad for the
little girls, the groovy Salvation back
home in New York, five there, the
Ambassador in DC, five there, then back
to LA and, dig, can you say the
HOLLYWOOD BOWL?
After that, who cared, baby? London,
Berlin, Stockholm, no hang-ups, nowhite-woman, black-man prejudices, being voted
‘World Top Musician’ by Melody Maker, overnight at
the Europa Hotel, many good friends and groovy
bad ladies, many good times and trips and ups and
downs and all-arounds, the best dope, the finest
pussy, many good friends living the dream with
you for you because of you.
Filming the gig at the Albert Hall a week later,
a stately performance for the educated white-rock
classes, turned on, moneyed, coming to dig the
Wild Man of Borneo act for the first time, getting
something else, something more, Jimi digging it
special, one for the collection, barely remembering
it a week after that.
Jimi is public property now. No longer
a secret. Mike and Chas smiling
contentedly from the wings. Everything
going to plan – almost – everything
right on groovy gravy. Almost.Taken from Two Riders Were
Approaching: The Life & Death of
Jimi Hendrix by Mick Wall, out on
November 14, published by Trapeze.
GET Reprinted with permission.
TY
x^2
“Nobody knew you could do that
with a guitar. He was playing
it with his teeth!
Lighting it on fire.”
Hendrix at London’s
Royal Albert Hall,
February 24, 1969.From Hendrix roadie
to Hawkwind:
Lemmy in May 1973.CLASSICROCKMAGAZINE.COM 71